Illegally dumped items attract more dumped items, and this sort of copycat littering is documented with photographs you can see by doing a web search for the phrase “Nothing Mattress.”
The recycling of mattresses does not happen through simple market forces. The springs of a typical mattress are made of low-value tempered steel. The polyurethane foam is hard to assemble into usable bales. The wood of a bed frame is expensive to grind into mulch. The textiles are hard to recycle at any price, and beds and box springs are expensive to move, store and disassemble.
To make recycling happen anyway, and to avoid illegal dumping, California this year joined Rhode Island and Connecticut in implementing a “product stewardship” initiative.
Consumers who buy a new mattress pay a fee of $11 per mattress or box spring. This money goes to the Mattress Recycling Council, a nonprofit organization headed by mattress industry representatives and charged with running the program.
The council is subject to oversight from the California Department of Resources Recovery and Recycling (CalRecycle) and input from an advisory committee, on which I serve. Their program includes incentives and requirements meant to facilitate recycling.
The first step, which took effect last year — as mandated two years earlier by Senate Bill 254 — was a requirement for all mattress retailers to accept old mattresses at no additional charge when delivering a new mattress at a customer’s home.
The next step, which began last year, was to register every manufacturer, retailer and renovator of mattresses in the state. Registration was necessary for the imposition of an $11 fee on every mattress and box spring sold in California. The Mattress Recycling Council uses collected money to provide payments to processing centers, and in exchange, these centers accept mattresses free from the public.
For example, in Ventura County, you can get rid of your old mattress for free by having your mattress retailer collect it when a new one is delivered or by dropping it off at the Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center or at the Del Norte Regional Recycling and Transfer in Oxnard.
To read the full story, visit http://www.vcstar.com/news/columnists/ventura-county-residents-can-now-recycle-used-mattresses-for-free-37235c04-827d-07c7-e053-0100007f3f-386161171.html.